“Bernadine Fouchard?” the sergeant said. “She’s Canadian, so we were going to call the consulate in the morning, let her contemplate her sins until then. She has to learn she can’t go around harassing people unless she wants to be on a short list for deportation.”
I squinted at her name badge: pizzello. “Is that the charge, Sergeant Pizzello?” I asked. “Harassment?”
Pizzello shook her head. “There was some kind of bust-up over near the lake. People were screaming at each other, the kind of thing that makes someone call the cavalry, but no one involved is pressing charges. Fouchard claims she was attacked by a guy on the scene, but he said he was out walking his dog—”
“At two in the morning?” I interrupted.
“He’s a night owl,” the sergeant said. “The patrol teams over there say they see him in the park in the middle of the night.”
“What does he do? Roam around imagining he’s Robin Hood?”
Pizzello suppressed a smile. “No one knows what he does. He’s one of those fixtures you find in every community. He’s got a few pet obsessions—litter, animals, and apparently this homeless piano player. He’s also got a temper, but he hasn’t done anything that merited an arrest. So far.”
“He have a name?” I asked. “If it’s the guy I’m thinking of, the people around him call him ‘Coop,’ but he must have a last name.”
The sergeant spoke into her lapel mike, listened for a moment, but shook her head. “The patrol team only knows him as Coop. They also know his dog, Bear, who apparently is the better-behaved member of the pair. Anyway, Coop told my patrol unit that the homeless woman was screaming for help; he went to protect her.
“Fouchard’s not that big and ordinarily I’d take that claim with a grain of salt. Two grains. But one of my guys says she tried to fight with them when they took her to the patrol car, and she landed a pretty good shin kick. She could have been charged with assaulting an officer, but this is an older, more laid-back team. Fouchard had a friend with her; my guys let her ride with them.”
The sergeant led me to the holding cells. The station was new; the cells were small but clean. Bernie was sharing space with two other women. One was snoring loudly, the other was snarling curses. Bernie was staring at her shoes, hunched over in a ball of misery.
Despite telling Angela not to involve me, her face lit up when she saw me with the sergeant. “Vic! Vic, I’m so sorry, I thought I was doing the right thing but I should have listened to you and to Angela. Are they going to put me in jail? Will I be thrown out of school? Oh, Mama and Papa will be so angry, so disappointed.” She burst into tears.
When she learned she wasn’t going to be charged with a crime, she flung her arms around Pizzello and made extravagant promises of good behavior.
The sergeant extricated herself. “Don’t go roaring into situations where you don’t know the players, Ms. Fouchard. And in particular, stay away from the Forty-seventh Street viaduct, or you’ll find yourself facing an order of protection.”
5
Story Hour
I didn’t remember the drive home, or putting Bernie and Angela into a Lyft car. I went to bed without undressing and woke some five hours later. Peter had taken off, leaving a note in glyph-like letters that read “Happy Day After Birthday.” He’d also made an artwork breakfast plate: a croissant with a chunk of robiola, one of my favorite cheeses, surrounded by orange segments. I was seriously thinking of falling in love.
I looked at the city news feed while I ate. Bernie’s skirmish with Coop hadn’t sounded interesting enough to local journalists of any stripe—print, broadcast, vlog, or blog—to make it from the police blotter to Twitter. That was a relief: it meant that Murray hadn’t noticed Bernie’s name on any of the data streams he followed, which meant Lydia Zamir—if it was Zamir—might be able to remain at the underpass dealing with her own demons. It also meant that Northwestern wouldn’t find out about Bernie’s skirmish with the law—which could jeopardize not only her hockey scholarship but her university career.
The person I wondered about most in this story wasn’t Zamir, or even Bernie, but Coop. Since he operated on the shortest of tempers, he could easily hurt Bernie if they clashed again. He’d shown up so pat at Zamir’s side when Bernie and Angela were there that he might pop up if I appeared.
It was after ten, later than I usually like to swim under a midsummer sun, but I leashed up my two dogs and drove to Forty-seventh Street, leaving the car in the lot where I’d parked yesterday. I took the dogs across the footbridge over Lake Shore Drive to the lake itself.
The shoreline here is rocky and not very inviting, but if you’re willing to pick your way down the boulders, you come to some of the best swimming in Chicago. The lake floor is granite, so the water is clear, and unless the city installs the beach described at yesterday’s SLICK meeting, the rocks limit the number of people who can deposit Pampers, condoms, and broken bottles. The bike and running paths were full, even in the middle of a workday, but once we climbed down to the lake, the three of us were on our own.
The temperature was in the low nineties, which in Chicago translates as miserably humid, but the water was cold. The dogs and I swam for half an hour, and when I came out, I threw balls for them for another few minutes until my skin was dry enough to get dressed.
Back at the viaduct, I tied them to a bike rack at the eastern edge of the viaduct, where they’d be in the shade but wouldn’t be able to get near Zamir, who was sitting in her nest of grimy blankets, the piano showing red against the darkness. She wasn’t playing, but as I slowly walked toward her, I could hear her crooning, rocking in time to a rhythm only she could hear.
A crate behind her held polystyrene cartons of uneaten food. My stomach turned, thinking what might be growing in a chicken or shrimp dinner on a hot day. A cardboard box contained a jumble of clothes.
I had written a note on my letterhead, stating simply that if she wanted medical help or someone to talk to, she should call me. I’d enclosed a couple of twenties, and placed it, with a liter of Gatorade, next to the piano.
I retreated to her perimeter but squatted, not saying anything, just being, in case she wanted to talk. She stopped crooning and pulled her piano close to her chest, cradling it, but after three or four minutes when I didn’t move or speak, she relaxed enough to push the piano an arm’s length away. After another moment, she began picking out notes and crooning again.
I stood slowly, massaging my hamstrings. I backed up another few steps before saying, “I’m Vic. My phone number is on the letter. Call if I can help.”
I returned to my dogs just as Coop rounded the corner with Bear. The three dogs seemed happy to meet each other; it was the man who showed hackle.
“What are you doing down here?” he demanded.
“I have a passport,” I assured him. “It’s all legal.”
“Not if you’re bothering her, it isn’t.” He jerked his head toward the piano player.
Mitch, my big black lab mix, didn’t like Coop’s tone. He wedged himself between us and made an ugly noise in his throat.
“You looking after your person?” Coop bent over Mitch, his voice suddenly soft and cajoling.
His whole affect changed along with his voice: he looked willowy, not sinewy, and Mitch responded by letting Coop scratch his ears. Bear and Peppy, my golden, shoved up against Coop’s legs, demanding their share of attention.
“You two are a couple of turncoats, aren’t you?” I said severely to my dogs, who grinned.
Coop stood back up. “If you have dogs like these, you can’t be all bad. Just don’t go interfering in business you don’t understand. We don’t like outsiders prying into our lives down here. No social workers, no do-gooders.”
“Fortunately, I’m neither. On the other hand, I’m someone who doesn’t react well to threats, so try dialing it down a decibel or two. Pretend I’m a dog that you want to be on good terms with.”
That forced a laugh out of him. “Wh
at breed?”
“Half Rottweiler, half pit dog. I’m loyal but fierce. And one of the people in my network of concern is the young woman you let the cops drag off early this morning. How did you happen on the scene so patly? And why didn’t you take responsibility for your part in the skirmish?”
“My part was to make sure no one, including your ‘network of concern,’ distresses her.” He jerked his head toward the pianist. “She’s had enough disturbance for three lifetimes. When people like you or that kid come around, it pulls the skin off her wounds and starts them bleeding again.”
“All the more reason to get her help.”
“All the more reason for you to fucking mind your own business.” His tone had turned ugly again.
I was getting whiplash trying to follow the switches between Nice Coop and Nasty Coop. Using a tone of exaggerated meekness, I said, “Tell me how to get in touch with you, Coop, so that I can check in advance whether I’m planning activities that will alarm you.”
He studied my face for a moment, then replied with surprising calmness, “I don’t know who you are, just what you say you do. I don’t know who you’re loyal to or who’s paying you. If I don’t know those things, I can’t trust you. When your kid showed up in the middle of the night, that scared the bejesus out of me. It would be typical—”
He bit off the sentence. I tried to ask him “typical” of what or whom, but he shook his head and refused to say anything else.
I took the dogs and drove slowly back to my office. If Lydia was a target of some malign person, she wasn’t at all hard to find. The most sense I could make of the situation was that Coop himself straddled some line between delusion and reality, and that Lydia was a bit player in his fantasy world. Which Bernie and I now inhabited as well.
When I was at my desk, I checked with Bernie, to reenforce the police injunction that she stay clear of Lydia Zamir. She was still subdued and in a compliant frame of mind.
“I promise, Vic. Anyway, I have one week to learn softball. That is my new coaching assignment, can you believe? At least soccer is like hockey, moving up and down the field, but softball—standing around chewing gum. How can you motivate team spirit while you’re waiting around like in a doctor’s office for something to happen?”
“Get them all singing ‘Savage,’” I suggested. “It will pump everyone up while they’re waiting.”
Right before hanging up, Bernie said in an offhand voice, “Vic, you remember Leo? Leo Prinz?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“He made the speech about the Lake Michigan beach, and the crazy man tried to attack him. You were there.”
“So I was,” I agreed: the excitement over Zamir, Coop, and Bernie’s night in the police station had pushed the SLICK meeting from my mind. “What about him?”
“They want him to finish his talk. Apparently some community person made the SLICK woman realize she couldn’t act like a dictator, so he has to make the whole speech. I told him I’d go. I thought you might like to come. You know, in case anyone attacks him again.”
“Bring your hockey stick,” I suggested. “You’re much fiercer than either Leo or me.”
“No, please, Vic. Angela has to take her girls to Blue Island that day. I want someone I know.”
“You know Leo,” I said.
“I’ll text you the details,” she said, as if I’d agreed.
“Bernie!” I expostulated, but she had hung up.
Five minutes later, I got her text with the details of the SLICK meeting, scheduled a few days from now. I deleted the text, but at dinner that night with Peter, I whined about Bernie’s exigency.
“And why someone as forceful as a whirlwind is interested in this young man is beyond me. He’s not a very rugged specimen.”
Peter laughed. “She’s got enough ferocity for two or three. As you do, yourself, Vic. But in you, there’s the extra dimension of wanting to heal the world, which means you’re constantly trying to look after strays even while you complain about them.”
“Is that a compliment or a complaint?” I said.
“It’s why I love you,” he said quietly. “And why I worry when your compassion drives you into the path of danger.”
My throat tightened; I couldn’t speak, but leaned across the table to squeeze his fingers.
The next day I had a client meeting in the South Loop, just a ten-minute drive from the viaduct where Zamir camped out. She wasn’t playing, and it took a moment or two for me to see her in her nest; her rags blended almost seamlessly into the filthy concrete wall. That was why I’d missed her when I walked past yesterday. I stood looking at her for too long a time—she became aware of me, whimpered, and clutched the piano, which had been buried under a blanket.
Peter’s description of me felt too grand—that I was trying to heal the world—but it’s true that someone as hurt and needy as this woman made me want to intervene. I couldn’t think of anything more to do than I’d already done, but on an impulse, I scribbled my home address and landline on the back of one of my cards and left it on the edge of her blanket.
“Please call me, or come to me, if you ever feel you can trust me to help you.”
At least Coop didn’t appear on this visit, but two days later he erupted into my life with a vengeance. I returned from an early run with the dogs to find him and Bear in front of my apartment building. As soon as Coop saw me he bounded down the walk, a newspaper crumpled in his hand.
“Did you do this? After I warned you to stay away?”
“Did I do what?” I asked. “Leave a newspaper on your lawn? I don’t know where you live, and even if I did, I wouldn’t erupt into your life like Mount Etna.”
“Damn you, don’t play innocent bystander with me.” He was shaking with fury, so much that he dropped the paper as he tried to shove it against my face.
I picked it up and turned my back to him so I could read it. The text box above the fold was outlined in thick black.
In the heavens, dying stars burn with a fierce heat before becoming black holes. What about Chicago’s human stars from yesteryear? Did they burn out or simply fade away?
In the Herald-Star’s riveting new series, Pulitzer Prize winner Murray Ryerson looks at the lives of people who used to be household names in this city. Some, like Brett Craven, burned like meteor showers and disappeared behind bars, while others, like Lee Swann, disappeared into bars. Some are living out their days peacefully in neighborhoods or small towns across the country. Perhaps the most dramatic and the saddest is Lydia Zamir, whom Murray discovered living under a railway viaduct.
Below the fold were two pictures of Lydia. The first had been shot during a performance at Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre. She was wearing a simple white tunic over black trousers. The photographer had caught her with hands on the keys, her eyes half shut, her expression intent as she concentrated on the place inside her where the music lived.
The second picture showed her under the viaduct. Like the concert shot, it had been taken without Zamir’s knowledge, with a wide-angle lens that showed her sitting amid her soiled blankets, pounding furiously on the toy piano. As in the concert photo, her eyes were half closed, her attention focused inward. A thread of saliva hung from the corner of her mouth.
My stomach turned. what happened to this brilliant musician? the subhead ran, but before I could read the article, Coop had snatched the paper from me.
“Well?” he demanded. “You going to deny you made this happen?”
“I didn’t make it happen,” I said. “But it was because—”
“Goddamn you!” He wadded up the paper and flung it on the ground. “When I specifically told you—warned you—”
“I told you the last time I saw you that I don’t respond to threats. Mitch! Peppy! Let’s go.”
I walked past him, but he grabbed my shoulder as I was unlocking the front door. “No!” I snapped. I ducked under his arm and shoved an elbow into his rib cage.
I turned and braced myself against the door, ready to kick if he came at me again, but the blow to his ribs acted like a cold shower. He put his arms down and backed up a few steps. His color subsided from umber to ordinary tan.
All three dogs had been letting out short urgent barks—danger!—but had been unsure whether to intervene: What should they do when two good dog people went to war? They stopped barking when Coop backed away, but they kept circling us, panting anxiously.
The noise had roused Mr. Contreras. He surged from the building in his magenta pajamas, waving a hammer. “What’s going on here? Who’s this creep? I saw him grab hold of you, Cookie—you need me to knock some sense into him?”
Coop said, “I don’t know who you are, but your Cookie here is the creep: she sicced some slimeball on a fragile woman.”
“What the heck are you trying to say, young man?” Mr. Contreras demanded.
“Murray,” I said before my neighbor moved into a higher gear. “He wrote a story about a woman who’s living under a viaduct. It turns out she used to be an important songwriter. Murray decided that would sell papers, or make the Star’s advertisers happy.”
Mr. Contreras took a moment to absorb that: he’s over ninety, still alert and reasonably fit, but he needs extra time these days. After a pause, he asked me, “You send Ryerson down to bother this woman?”
“No,” I said at the same time Coop said, “Yes.”
“I ain’t talking to you,” Mr. Contreras said to Coop. “What happened?”
I told him the part of Lydia’s history I knew. “Her music was distinctive, back when she was performing—she mixed the classics with rhythms that she picked up from indigenous people in the Americas. This guy here, Coop, he calls himself—”
“Because it’s my goddamn name,” Coop growled.
“Watch your language around ladies, young man,” Mr. Contreras snapped.
Dead Land Page 4